


let's get together before we get much older

by tempestbreak



Series: Richie Tozier's 41st Birthday [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst with a Happy Ending, Big Dick Richie Tozier, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Homophobia, Fix-It, Flashbacks, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation, Porn with Feelings, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23056636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestbreak/pseuds/tempestbreak
Summary: Eddie has never been to Richie’s birthday party.But Richie had kind of hoped this time would be different.---A present for Richie Tozier on his birthday, because he deserves it.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Richie Tozier's 41st Birthday [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759936
Comments: 117
Kudos: 1072





	let's get together before we get much older

**Author's Note:**

> cw: emetophobia, alcohol use, canon-typical homophobia (check the tags!)

Eddie has never been to Richie's birthday party.

Technically, he was there for Richie’s seventh birthday, but that was hardly a party, at least not by Tozier standards. Still, it was pretty all right. He told his parents he wanted to bring in something sweet, so his mom sent him to school with store-bought cupcakes for the class, piled high with blue and pink frosting, white sprinkles rattling in the plastic clamshell casing. His dad even drove him in that morning instead of Richie having to bundle up and make the walk in the biting Maine winter. 

It was the first year in elementary school Richie had ever been in class with Eddie. Sure, he knew of little Eddie Kaspbrak, with the clattering inhaler and the big brown eyes that made him look like _Astro Boy_ , had even played with him because they both knew Bill Denbrough, but having class together was different. From the moment Eddie sat in the desk in front of him, pulled out a miniature bottle of disinfectant, and wiped down his desk, Richie had been hooked. Nothing had ever been able to hold his attention like this doe-eyed kid with his Mary Poppins fanny pack brimming with medications and medicinal sundries, no spoonfuls of sugar in sight.

On that day, March 7, 1983, something about Eddie’s obvious excitement over the cupcakes; something about the way he whispered, secretly, “My mom never lets me have cupcakes;” something about the way his big brown eyes became even bigger when he saw the pillars of pink icing; made Richie march up to Mrs. Casey’s desk and lie to her face. 

“My dad told me I could have two cupcakes,” he told her, “on account of it’s my birthday. And my dad’s a dentist so he oughta know.”

And Mrs. Casey said, “Okay,” for once, and even gave him a smile as he chose one blue and one pink, for variety, and when Richie got back to his desk he served them both to Eddie and watched his eyes light up in his small, freckled face.

And those eyes—as Richie would have bet good money, four shiny-ass quarters, straight from the fucking mint, prolly—proved to be bigger than Eddie’s stomach, because on top of the one he already had, Eddie ate three damn cupcakes. _Eddie Kaspbrak_ ate _three whole cupcakes_ and got such a bad stomach ache that he blew chunks right there at his desk, and Richie laughed so hard he cried at how it came out bright blue and pink, like Eddie’s insides were made of frosting.

But Mrs. Casey called Eddie’s mom because of it, and she dragged Eddie out of school early. And that sucked, but the sheepish smile Eddie gave him, the quiet, “Happy birthday, Richie,” he called as his mom pulled him by the wrist… that sure didn’t. 

When Richie’s mom picked him up that afternoon, she said, smiling tightly, “So, Sonia Kaspbrak called. Apparently, her son Eddie was allergic to the cupcakes.”

“Pfft, Eddie ain’t allergic,” Richie laughed. “He just ate too many and ralphed ’em all up. Pretty chuckalicious, if you ask me.”

“Well, apparently, Sonia Kaspbrak thinks it was something in the cupcakes we bought,” Maggie Tozier said, still smiling. “And _apparently_ it was irresponsible of me to send you to school with those without asking Sonia Kaspbrak first.” The smile is more like gritted teeth now, the words coming out clenched. “Because _apparently_ Sonia Kaspbrak set the Reichstag building on fire and is now sworn fucking chancellor of Derry and all birthday treat decisions must go through _her._ ”

Richie shoved his too-big glasses up his nose. He had almost never seen his mom this mad at someone who wasn’t him or his dad, and he had _absolutely_ never heard her use the F-word in front of him. It was kind of awesome, actually.

“Yowza, Mom,” he said.

She laughed, her face relaxing, as they turned onto their street. “Anyway, did you have a good birthday? Even though Eddie Kaspbrak threw up?”

“Eddie throwing up was the best part!”

She gave him that bemused, bewildered look she often did. “Really?” 

“Yeah! He’s really funny.”

“Well, that makes sense,” she said drily. “His mother was an absolute riot.” 

When they pulled into the driveway, she sighed and turned to him. “So you’re friends with this kid? Eddie?”

Richie nodded enthusiastically.

“You’re gonna want to invite him to future birthdays?”

Richie nodded enthusiastically.

Maggie sighed again. “Well, all right. God knows the kid could probably use an escape,” she muttered. “But it seems like birthday cupcakes are out. You’ll have to think of something else for next year, Richie.”

So, the next year, and the next, and every year after that, Richie thought of something else. But no matter what, it was never good enough for Sonia Kaspbrak. As his mom would say, _apparently._

So, no. Eddie has never been to Richie’s birthday party.

But Richie had kind of hoped this time would be different.

_-_ 2017 _-_

“I wish I could, man, I really do.” Eddie’s voice is earnest over the phone, even over the loud New York bustle. “It’s just that my boss just dumped a whole bunch of bullshit on me, and your birthday’s in the middle of the week this year, and I have like no PTO left after... you know.”

“You were impaled by a killer clown.” The barista making Richie’s coffee jerks his head up, eyes wide. Richie cups a hand over the phone and says, reassuringly: “As a sex thing.”

“Fucking _excuse_ me?”

“The barista overheard, Eds. I was just reassuring him.”

“By saying it was a _sex thing?_ ”

“It’s L.A., dude, no one’s gonna kink-shame you. They’ll get canceled. Thanks.” He accepts the coffee with a nod to the barista, who did look slightly reassured that the impaling was sexual, he thinks as he shakes a sugar packet. Fucking L.A. It’s good(-ish) to be back.

“Are you putting _more sugar_ in your coffee, Rich? Didn’t I already hear you order some shit with, like, three pumps of _toffee nut syrup_ or whatever the fuck?”

“Those are some fucking Lassie ears, Eds, hearing a sugar packet over New York traffic.”

“Avoiding the fucking question.” Eddie sighs, bringing a smile to Richie’s face as he tucks the phone between his ear and shoulder. “You eat like a goddamn raccoon, Rich. You’re probably prediabetic. Have you ever had your blood sugar tested?”

“Yes, and much like our super cool new president, my doctor wrote a letter saying that I’m the healthiest individual who ever stood up in front of a crowd to do offensive impressions of more talented people,” Richie drawls, replacing the lid on his cup and readjusting the phone. “You know, berating my dietary choices, stressing about my health... it’s almost like you’re here. Why don’t you just Skype into the restaurant tomorrow and you can, like, interrogate the waitress about whether the chef ever even _whispered_ the word ‘cashew’ around the food we’re ordering? It’ll be like getting the full Kaspbrak experience.”

“Fuck you, dude.”

Richie laughs, pushing through the door and onto the street. The coffee shop is just around the corner from his house, and it’s about noon on a Monday, so the neighborhood is quiet. It’s a cool day, for southern California, and since the drought is finally ending, it no longer smells like the teetering husks of the palm trees lining the road are going to spontaneously combust. Now it just smells like L.A.: hot asphalt and car exhaust and Mexican food and big-ass dreams and _not_ the Pacific salt air, no matter what anyone else says, because it’s too damn far away and there are too many fucking people and cars and buildings in between.

“You know I’m just kidding, man,” Richie says. “Well, kind of. If you wanted to Facetime tomorrow night, it might be nice. You know, Bev and Ben are coming in from out of town. And Bill’s here, of course. Maybe we could even get Mike on the line, too, from wherever the hell he is. It’d be a big ol’ Losers’ birthday reunion.”

Eddie doesn’t immediately answer. Richie kicks at a stray lava rock from some over-achieving neighbor’s fancy drought-resistant garden, but it gets lodged in his sandal. He has to shake it loose awkwardly, flailing his leg until the rock goes skittering across the asphalt.

“Yeah, I don’t know if I could do tomorrow night,” Eddie is saying on the line when Richie rights himself. “I’m probably gonna have to work late. My boss—”

“Look, man, I get it,” Richie interjects. “You’re afraid it’ll be awkward without Chuckles McStabsalot there. We just won’t have much to talk about since the guy who brought us all together is gone.”

Eddie laughs. “Actually, I’d love to see everyone. I know I haven’t been super active in the group chat lately. I’ve been reading everything, I’ve just had a lot going on…”

Richie stops at his mailbox and reaches in. “Eds. Stop apologizing. Seriously. I don’t expect you to just drop everything to fly out here for my dumbass birthday. You’ve got work, and a wife, and it’s not even a big one. Forty-one.”

Eddie’s quiet. “But I _missed_ all the big ones,” he mutters. “Even before we forgot.”

Yeah. _That_ part makes Richie want to curl up around a bucket of ice cream and listen to The Smiths. So does the wife part, and the part where Eddie was everything Richie had been looking for his whole life without realizing it. He wonders how many sad pints of ice cream he’s consumed over the years were really about Eddie Kaspbrak.

“Hey, think of it this way,” Richie says, tucking his mail under one arm and pinning his phone to his ear with his other shoulder as he fumbles his house keys out of his shorts pocket. “I’m used to it by now.”

“Was that supposed to make me feel better? Because all it did was remind me that I’ve been such a shitty, absent friend that you’ve given up expecting anything else from me.”

“Eds, you literally saved my life.” Richie pushes the door open and allows the mail to fall from his armpit to the floor with the rest of it. “I wouldn’t even be _having_ a forty-first birthday without you. You’re allowed to miss _all_ of my birthdays from here on out.”

“Okay.” Eddie sounds deeply uncertain. “I’m not going to, though.”

Richie kicks the door shut behind him. “‘Kay.”

“Really. I’m not. I just need to get some things squared away first—”

“Don’t let your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash, Kaspbrak.” 

“Wow, what wisdom,” Eddie intones. “You should cross-stitch that on a throw pillow.”

“Where do you think I learned it?” Richie shoots back, throwing himself down on his couch. It’s one of the few newer purchases in the entire bungalow, which Richie bought when he was just starting to make good money. The old couch he’d inherited from an ex-roommate, a flowery affair with stiff springs that may as well have been knives. The new one was a splurge, because Richie knew he would end up falling asleep on it at least three nights a week. Plush and deep, it was practically the width of a twin bed. One time Bev had visited and when she sat with her back against the cushions, her feet had dangled in mid-air. She looked like a child. 

Eddie laughs. “Yeah, all right. Hey, I gotta go, I was supposed to just be getting coffee from the cafe in our building and my boss is gonna flip his shit if I don’t get back upstairs soon. I just wanted to call because, well...”

“Yeah, I know,” Richie says, “letting me down easy.”

“Well, the birthday was only part of it,” Eddie says, and takes a breath, as though he’s gearing himself up to say something uncomfortable. Richie shifts uneasily. “I also wanted to tell you that I’m… proud of you.”

Richie’s discomfort only builds. “Oh.”

“For all the… coming out. And everything. You know.”

“Yeah. I know you are, man,” says Richie. “You said so in the group chat.” 

_Actually, it was the_ last _thing you said in the group chat,_ he wants to add. _Not like your subsequent radio silence has kept me in an inescapable thought spiral ever since or anything._

“Well,” says Eddie, “I wanted to say it with my mouth, too. Not just my fingers.” He must use those Lassie ears to hear the intake of breath as Richie opens his mouth to reply, because he cuts in: “And _don’t_ say anything, Trashmouth. I’m trying to be fucking real with you for once.”

“Yeah, I hate it,” Richie whines. “I hate post-therapy Eddie.”

“Well, I have always hated, and continue to hate, pre-therapy Richie,” Eddie replies. “Now, I really do have to go. Happy early birthday, Rich.”

“If it’s not on the day, it doesn’t count,” Richie tells him, just to be a turd.

Eddie groans indistinctly on the line.

“We’ll miss you tomorrow night, Eds,” Richie says. “I’ll eat an extra slice of cake for you. Stay gold.”

As Richie pulls the phone away from his ear, he hears: “What? Richie, no, don’t have an _extra_ slice of cake—”

He hangs up and brings his sickly sweet drink up to his mouth. He pulls a face at the taste and sets it down. Calling himself a three-pump chump for his nut syrup sounded way funnier in his head.

\- 1986 -

For Richie’s tenth birthday, he told his parents he wanted to have a movie rental night. Normally, when the Toziers visited the old Derry VideoWorks, they rented two VHS tapes—one for the three of them to watch together, and one for Maggie and Went to watch after Richie went to bed. All of the ones his parents got had boring titles like _Amadeus_ or _Ordinary People_ or _An Officer and a Gentleman._ That last one had made Richie wonder if his parents were watching some kind of romance movie with, like, two men or something wild like that, one an officer and one a gentleman, and he had lingered on the stairs, peering under the banister to see, but at the end the main guy carried a woman out of some factory and everyone applauded like it was new and novel, and Richie climbed the stairs into bed feeling itchy and bored.

Anyway, since it was his birthday, his dad told him they would rent four— _four!_ —movies, whatever he liked, even stuff that was rated R as long as it was only for violence and not sex. _And_ he was allowed, for the very first time, to have a sleepover with _multiple_ friends at once, which really meant that his parents were prepared to get not a lick of sleep due to the sounds of four boys’ hushed fighting and yelping and giggling downstairs all night long.

Richie had asked his three best pals—Bill Denbrough, Stanley Uris, and Eddie Kaspbrak—that Monday at lunch. On Monday night, Sonia Kaspbrak called the Tozier residence.

Richie picked up. “Tozier & Son Crematorium, your family’s ash is our family’s cash!”

Over the line, a woman let out noise like an injured pigeon.

“Richie, give me the phone,” hissed Maggie, plates clattering in the sink as she hurriedly wiped her hands on the dishrag.

“I’m going to put you on with my associate,” Richie said into the phone before Maggie pulled it from his grasp.

“Hello, this is the Tozier residence, Maggie speaking.” A cloud passed over her face. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Kaspbrak, how are you? Yes, it’s Richie’s birthday again. Well, he has one every year, you see.”

Richie snickered. 

“No, I’m not trying to be funny, Mrs. Kaspbrak, it’s just the truth,” Maggie said wearily. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “They’re going to rent movies. Uhh, watch them, I can only assume.” She rolled her eyes at Richie, and he smothered a laugh.

The conversation lasted a long time. Richie got bored way before it was over and went to the den to watch a new show he’d gotten into, _Family Ties._ He didn’t totally get the jokes, but there was a young guy who starred in it, fluffy brown hair, funny and strong-willed and particular, wearing ties and button-downs and sometimes suspenders. Richie thought he wished he looked as good in the suit his mom promised he’d grow into.

After what felt like a long time, Maggie appeared in the doorway. Richie rolled up onto his elbows and looked at her expectantly. “Well, doc, tell it to me straight,” he said.

“Mrs. Kaspbrak has relented,” she answered, tired. “Eddie can come.”

Richie collapsed onto his back and shoved two thumbs into the air. 

The day of Richie’s birthday, Bill came over with Richie after school—Stan and Eddie both had to go home first—and the two of them played _Pac-Man_ on Richie’s Atari until Maggie was ready to take them to the rental store. Richie had decided he wanted to watch _only_ scary movies. Part of it was because scary movies were normally out of the running for family movie night, and with the ban on R-rated movies lifted, his horizons were vast and starry. But another, bigger part of it was the memory of when he and Eddie had snuck into _A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge_ in November. When Freddy Krueger had peeled away the skin on his skull to reveal his pulsing brain, Eddie had yelped and gripped Richie’s sweaty palm, sticky and gritty from popcorn, and hadn’t let go. It was out on VHS by then, and Richie picked it as one of his four, wondering if that could happen again, on his birthday.

They went back to the house, plastic bag full of movies in tow, and Stan arrived promptly at five o’clock, his Boy Scout-approved sleeping bag held before him like a barrel. They had only now to wait for Eddie. 

At six, the pizza arrived. Richie didn’t want to start eating without Eddie—his mom always insisted no one should start eating dinner until everyone was seated—but he was starving. He set aside some garlic twists for Eddie, though, since Eddie’s mom had him off dairy.

At seven, they were on their fifth game of Clue when Maggie peeked her head into the den. “Shouldn’t you get started watching your movies, Richie?” she asked. “If you don’t start now you’ll be up until dawn.”

“Yeah, Richie, I’m so sick of C-Clue,” said Bill. “Stan wins every time.”

“No, guys, we should wait for Eddie to get here,” said Richie. “He’s probably on his way.”

“Just call him,” Stan said, studying his cards. “Tell him to get his butt over here.”

Richie sighed and threw his cards down, unfolding his legs from under him with a huff. Maggie disappeared into the living room again while Richie went to the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen and dialed. 

“Hello. Kaspbrak residence.” 

“Hi, Mrs. K, this is Richie Tozier,” Richie said, putting on his best talking-to-adults voice. “I was wondering if Eddie’s already on his way to my birthday party?”

“Oh. Richard,” she sniffed. “I’m very sorry for the late notice, but Eddie won’t be able to make it to your birthday after all.”

Richie felt a _twang_ somewhere in his brain, like her words had snapped a string. She didn’t sound sorry at all, he thought. She sounded pleased. Triumphant.

“What? Why not?” he demanded, throwing his polite adult voice straight out the window.

“He has a horrible cold and is too sick to leave the house.”

“But he was fine at school today!” he spluttered. Uselessly, he knew.

“A cold can come over you at any time, Richard, you should know that by now. I hear you’re turning ten years old.”

Richie felt his stomach churning with shame and frustration. He tangled his fingers in the cord so the tips turned angry red-purple. “Well, can I talk to him?” he asked helplessly.

“I’m afraid Eddie-bear is far too sick to come to the phone.”

His eyes were welling up hot already. “But Eddie was _fine_ today, he _told_ me he was going to come…”

“ _My_ Eddie,” said Sonia Kaspbrak primly, “has a very delicate immune system and if he gets a cold it can become quite serious in just a few hours, _especially_ if he’s spent all week overexerting himself with dirty little boys who play in the mud and dirty water.” _Like you,_ Richie heard loud and clear.

“I’m not dirty, Mrs. Kaspbrak,” Richie said weakly, thinking of how his butter-sticky fingers had clutched Eddie’s sweaty hand in the dark theater. How, when Freddy took over Jesse and made him kill his best friend Grady, Richie had suddenly, violently, felt like crying.

She ignored him. “I’ll send Eddie to school on Monday with the present he got you,” she said. “Good night, Richard.”

“Okay. Tell Eddie—”

The line went dead.

Richie hung up the receiver with a clatter, hot tears stinging behind his eyes. He looked at the stack of VHS tapes on the table in the entrance hallway, tucked in their generic tan plastic rental cases, and wanted to scream and knock them to the floor. 

“Is Eddie on his way?” Maggie asked, peeking her head around the corner. As she laid eyes on Richie, his face red and crumpled, his shoulders drawn up around his ears, she frowned and came to put her cool arm around him. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Eddie’s not coming,” Richie huffed wetly into his mom’s chest. “His mom says he’s sick.”

Maggie went quiet, rubbing his back. “She seems to say that a lot, doesn’t she?” she murmured.

Richie clenched his fists in his mom’s blouse. “I hate her,” he said viciously. “She said— she said I should know by now that Eddie’s small and weak and gets sick easy but he’s not, he doesn’t. He _doesn’t._ ” He drew in a shuddering, angry breath. “There’s nothing wrong with Eddie, _or_ me—”

“Did that woman say there was something wrong with you?” Maggie asked sharply. She pulled him gently away from her to look down at him. He tried to avoid her gaze. “Richie.”

Sonia Kaspbrak’s cruel words rattled in his skull like brittle chicken bones, getting lodged in his throat, choking him. 

_dirty little boys dirty little boys dirty little_

Finally, he shook his head. “No, Mom,” he muttered. “She didn’t. I just hate her.”

Maggie sighed and pulled his head back to her shoulder. And he was ten and very grown-up but he still let her. “You shouldn’t hate anyone, Richie. Don’t give them that power over you,” Maggie said gently. “But I get it.”

\- 2017 -

Bill lets himself in with his own key as Richie is fixing himself a seven-and-seven at the wet bar. 

“Ah, there’s the birthday boy,” Bill calls from the doorway, stepping widely around the pile of mail on the floor. “Pregaming his own dinner, no less.”

“Like a champ.” Richie raises his glass, ice cubes clinking, about to ask if Bill wants one, as well, when he notices that behind him, Bill is trailing in a banana-yellow foil balloon of Pikachu. “Uhh, how old do you think I am, Big Bill? Forty going on four?”

Bill laughs up at the balloon, a little sheepishly. “Ha, yeah, it’s a little s-silly,” he says. The stutter has almost disappeared, except for when he’s unsure or embarrassed. “I saw it in the grocery store and I thought of you because, well…” He reaches up and turns it so Richie can get a good look.

Once he does, he barks out a laugh. The entire balloon is Pikachu-shaped, but somehow at the bottom, between Pikachu’s crinkly foiled legs, is another, smaller Pikachu, printed onto the balloon, so it looks like...

“It looks like Pikachu’s got another Pikachu for a dick,” Richie laughs. 

“Yeah,” chuckles Bill, letting it rise up to Richie’s stucco ceiling and bob there lightly. “I dunno who signed off on this design, but I thought you might get a k-kick out of it.”

“You thought right, Billy,” Richie says, taking a pull from his glass. “It’s like looking in a mirror.”

Bill tilts his head. “Meaning you also have a Pikachu for a dick, or that your dick is just another, tiny Richie?”

He winks. “Get me liquored up enough tonight, you just might find out.”

Bill chauffeurs him to the restaurant, a pretentious steak place that Richie has never heard of but that fit his two requirements of having a) booze and b) not a single fucking fortune cookie in sight. When they get there, Bev and Ben are already seated in a secluded, romantic booth, seated on the same side, like Richie and Bill are double-dating them. 

Well, they could be. Bill’s not wearing his wedding ring anymore, Richie knows. All of Hollywood knows. Bill Denbrough’s split with Audra Phillips over “irreconcilable differences” was big news, like, two months ago, when it came on the heels of noted straight comedian Richie Tozier’s coming out. But then came the inauguration, and the Women’s March, and pretty much everything else has receded into the background since then, drowned by a tidal wave of exhortations to vote in the primaries, campaign door-to-door for Dems, call your representatives, because this shit _isn’t normal._

In retrospect, January 2017 was the absolute best time Richie could have ever chosen to come out, if he wanted it to be immediately ignored by everybody.

“There he is,” sings Bev, sliding out from the booth with her arms outstretched. “Mister America. Happy birthday, Richie.”

Richie puts his arms around her gratefully, soaking her in. When she steps back, her hands still clutching his shoulders, he glances at Ben and says, “If I’m Mister America, I think that makes your boyfriend Mr. Universe.”

“Rich,” chides Ben, following suit and enfolding Richie in one of the strongest hugs he’s ever been part of, second only to Mike Hanlon. As they slide into the booth, he tells them as much.

“Where _is_ the illustrious Mr. Hanlon these days, anyway?” he asks, after ordering his first—no, wait, second drink of the night. 

“New Orleans,” says Bill without skipping a beat, eyes still on his menu. He puts the emphasis on the final syllable: New Or _-leens._ “He’s sticking to the South for now. Winter.”

Bev and Ben exchange a glance in response to Bill’s knowledge of Mike’s whereabouts. Richie wonders if they’ve been speculating the way he has. They all saw them in It’s lair, foreheads pressed together, hands clasped on necks in visible relief. If Bill and Mike got together, Richie supposes he would be happy for them. But another part of him would want to cut a hole in a frozen lake and pencil-dive into it.

“What about Eddie, Richie?” Ben asks. “Have you two been talking?” 

Richie receives his drink gratefully from the server and frowns at Ben as he takes a sip from the rim. (No straw, because it’s Cali-fucking-fornia. Save the whales.) “Not really?” he says, cadence questioning. “He called yesterday to tell me he couldn’t come tonight. Not like I was holding my breath.”

It comes out more bitter than he’d intended, so he buries his nose in his drink. Bev nods sympathetically. “He has a lot on his plate right now,” she says gently.

“Yeah, I’m not mad at him,” Richie says quickly. Even _that_ sounds accusatory. Fuck. “I mean, he’s got a whole life going on, three thousand miles away. What’s he gonna do, uproot it all to come out here just for one night? In the middle of the week?” 

“That’s what I told him. He never came to any of your other birthdays, anyway,” says Bill, as if that’s supposed to make it better.

“Not helping, Bill,” says Bev, rolling her eyes.

“You talked to him about it?” Richie asks, turning his whole body in the narrow booth to look at Bill. 

“Uh, n-no,” Bill lies, blatantly. The table goes quiet. 

Richie rolls his eyes and returns to his drink, downing it in two gulps. The ice clinks atonally as the glass clatters on the table. Eddie wants to complain to Bill behind his back about Richie’s birthday? Fucking fine by him.

“I’m gonna have to head out early, by the way,” Bill says, changing the subject. He checks his watch, a preposterous Rolex that Richie decides he’ll make fun of him for after another drink. “Around nine-thirty. Ben and Bev said they could give you a ride home?”

“No problem,” says Richie, avoiding eye contact. He flags down another server, empty glass in his hand. “Could I get another one of these, please? Two, actually. Yeah, thanks. It’s my birthday.”

\- 1989 -

For Richie’s thirteenth birthday, he told his parents he wanted to get out of Derry, and that he wanted to take Eddie with him.

He didn’t mention Eddie specifically. He just asked if he could bring a friend. But Maggie and Wentworth Tozier exchanged a look over the dinner table, and Richie knew they knew who he had in mind.

“So should your mother be expecting a call from her friend Sonia?” Went asked, tongue in cheek. He smiled when Maggie sighed into her pot roast.

“Nope. Just leave it to me,” Richie said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Young Mastah Tozier is becoming quite the chah-mah, wot-wot!”

“What-ho!” Went laughed, nudging Maggie with his elbow until she gave a slight smile.

“All right, Richie, if you insist,” she said. “But if that woman tries to come with us, I’m not going.”

The next day, Richie found Eddie by his locker in between classes. He didn’t want to ask him in front of Bill. Ever since Georgie had disappeared in October, Bill had been different. Not that Richie blamed him. It… well, it sucked, and he hated it. Richie didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to describe it any other way. But he didn’t want to ask Eddie to go away for his birthday in front of this new Bill, who readily grew quiet and stared into the middle distance with gray-blue eyes the depth of the ocean.

“Lookin’ pretty as a picture today, Eds,” Richie said, pinching Eddie’s cheek.

Eddie smacked his hand away. “A picture of your mom’s diaphragm,” he grumbled, making Richie heartily guffaw.

“Ah, Eddie, my love,” he said, leaning on the lockers. “Every day you remind me how lucky I am to have you in my life.”

“What do you want, Richie?” Eddie asked, suspicious.

“What do I _want?_ Why, only to whisk you away, show you a new life, Eds, in _a little place called Kokomo. We’ll get there fast and then we’ll take it slow_ —”

“Spit it out, dude, I don’t got all day for you to do the hula.”

"My birthday's coming up," Richie said, seamlessly. "My parents said we'd go on a trip for it and I can take a friend. Wanna come?"

For a second, Eddie's eyes glinted with hunger, a golden-hazel sheen like tiger's-eye. Then a shade dropped in front of them. He drew his lips in and looked away petulantly, as though Richie had almost fooled him. "There's no way," he said, closing his locker and reattaching the combination lock. "My mom would never let me go."

Richie tried not to let his disappointment show. He just lifted a forearm to lean it on the lockers above Eddie's head, fiddling with his lock with his other hand. Last year, he had memorized Eddie's combination, just to piss him off and prove he could. He had cut a centerfold out of an old, water-logged titty mag he and Stan had found in the Barrens and plastered it to the back of Eddie's locker, and had nearly pissed himself laughing when Eddie opened it between classes and shrieked, his papers blasting off him in every direction. For weeks after that, Eddie had kicked and bit and twisted at Richie’s sunburnt skin, any time he remembered, or any time Richie reminded him, which he did often, just so Eddie would push him down and yank at his hair and touch him, notice him and no one else.

Lately, Richie had been thinking about it, all of it, a lot. Eddie's small hands twisting his arm to give him a rope burn. Eddie's fingers jabbing into his side to get him ticklish and squirming. Eddie's hands and eyes and sticklike shins on him when they had the rare sleepover, which could only happen incidentally, a consequence of Eddie coming over straight from school and picking up the Toziers’ phone, saccharine: “Since I'm already over here, the Toziers are asking me to stay for dinner, Mommy, is it okay? And after dinner, it'll be pretty late. If I stay over, Mommy, is it okay? It's cold at night right now, I don't want to get sick from going outside.”

The first time he heard Eddie pull _that_ one, Richie's jaw dropped. That was new. Eddie was always syrupy sweet with his mom, and it worked, usually. But when Richie overheard Eddie say _that_ on the phone, he recognized it for what it was: a sea change. Eddie Kaspbrak wasn't just smart. He was conniving. 

When Eddie had hung up and turned to Richie, triumphant, Richie had whistled low. "Damn, Eds,” he said, impressed, “you're a fox in more ways than one!"

Eddie had rolled his eyes, but glowed with pleasure. “Don't call me Eds. Now let’s get back to _Mega Man._ I bet I can beat Metal Man’s stage before you.”

To be honest, Richie had kind of hoped Eddie could come up with something similar for this birthday trip, some kind of insinuation for why it was the better, _safer_ option for him to go with Richie rather than stay behind. But he knew it was different. He shouldn’t be surprised. 

He spun the dial on the lock absentmindedly. "No worries," he said, shrugging, "I figured. Guess I'll just ask Bill or Stan."

"You didn't already ask them?"

Richie shook his head.

Eddie's face went pensive, brows furrowing. He drummed his twitchy fingers on the lockers. His eyes darted to Richie's, narrowed, shrewd. "Where are you going?"

"Not sure," Richie said. "Maybe Boston?"

Eddie's eyes widened. "That's out of the state."

"The whole world's out of the state, Eds."

"Don't call me Eds," he snapped, reflexive. He dropped his twitchy hand from the locker with a sigh and stood straight. "I'll try to talk to her. Boston's all, like, historical, right? Good hospitals. Maybe I can convince her." He shrugged helplessly, and then jabbed a finger at Richie's chest, meaning business. " _Don’t_ ask anyone else yet."

"Ehh, whatever you say, boss," said Richie like a cartoon mobster, chewing on an imaginary cigar.

The next day, Eddie found Richie by the field. He threw himself down on the grass and began ripping up clumps, dirt dangling from the roots. 

"I haven't asked her yet," Eddie snapped, even though Richie hadn’t asked. "There was some news story last night about how most kidnappings are committed by people you know. She would have thought I was serving myself up for your family to sell me to a sweatshop."

The next day was a similar story, and the next day, and the next. Mrs. Kaspbrak read an article about someone stepping on an old needle in a city. Mrs. Kaspbrak's sister called about how her old work friend's daughter got scarlet fever, did you know scarlet fever's making a comeback? Mrs. Kaspbrak heard on the radio that the Soviets might be preparing to launch a last-ditch attack on the Eastern seaboard, and everyone should make sure to bunker down and gather their loved ones close.

After a full week of failing to bring it up to his mom, Eddie joined Richie on the bleachers, where Richie was smoking cigarettes with Beverly Marsh. Bev and Eddie didn't know each other well, and Richie knew her only marginally better. Bev had expressed a tickled, almost condescending amusement at Eddie, and Eddie had told Richie in hushed tones that his mom told him Beverly was _that_ kind of girl, who lived in _that_ part of town, which only made nausea rise in Richie’s throat as he remembered Sonia Kaspbrak calling him a _dirty little boy._ He wondered what kinds of things she said to Eddie about _him_.

Nevertheless, Richie felt a jolt when the three of them—him, Eddie, and Bev—met together, as though something had slotted into place. The same way he felt when he, Eddie, Bill, and Stan were together. It felt right, yet somehow incomplete.

Eddie pulled his knees up next to his chest when he sat beside Richie on the slippery aluminum bench, icy from the cold. Richie's ass was already numb. He was fine, though; he ran hot, always, and he sucked in heat through his lips, from the embers of tar and nicotine. But he knew Eddie ran cold. He wanted to lift his arm and let Eddie tuck himself under the wing of his denim jacket, coil up next to the space heater that was Richie. Maybe a year ago he might have done that very thing, and maybe Eddie would have curled up willingly. But not now.

"I still haven't told her," said Eddie, hushed, eyeing Bev sideways, as though they were conducting some kind of heist. "And I don't think I can."

"All right, Eds, no pressure, I can tell Stan to be on deck—"

"No, no, I'm saying..." Eddie glanced this way and that before leaning even farther into Richie's space. "Maybe we shouldn't tell her at _all._ "

Richie choked on smoke, coughing violently. Bev lifted an amused eyebrow at his plight. 

"Excuse me, _what?_ " Richie made a show of smoothing the tangled black curls away from his right ear, turned that one toward Eddie. "Say it into my good ear, Mary.”

Eddie scowled at him. “I _mean,_ she doesn’t have to know until we’re gone,” he hissed. “I know I’ll be safe with you and your parents, and I can call her from the hotel, and by then we’ll be in Boston.”

Richie could scarcely believe his ears. “Who are you and what have you done with Eddie Kaspbrak?” he breathed, in awe. Bev giggled behind him.

Flushed, perhaps from the biting winter air, Eddie crossed his arms over his knees. “Well? What do you think?”

“I think we’re gonna hafta get you a red jacket, Eds,” Richie said, grinning and slapping him on the shoulder, “because you’re a rebel without a cause. Wanna smoke?” 

He recoiled. “Fuck no, those things cause cancer, Richie. Talk about rebelling without a cause,” he grumbled, making Richie and Bev laugh.

They ironed out their plan over the course of weeks. It wasn’t much of a plan—it really only involved Richie having his parents pull up in front of Eddie’s house when they headed out early Saturday morning and Eddie leaving his house before his mom was awake—but they were too caught up in the excitement and anticipation to realize. 

The day before they were to leave, a Friday, Richie biked home as fast as his legs would go, thinking of what he would pack. His mom wasn’t home when he arrived, so he pounded up the stairs without worrying about her yelling at him for shaking the ceiling and dragged his duffel bag out of the closet, haphazardly tossing things in as he remembered them.

He became distracted wondering what tapes to bring, so he decided to give them all a listen to decide. Distantly, he heard the phone ring, and ring, and ring again. With a sigh he pushed himself off his bed and went to the phone on the table in the upstairs hallway. 

As soon as the phone was to his ear, he heard it: the rattling blast of an inhaler. 

“Eds?” he asked, immediately on edge. “What happened?”

Eddie’s voice was shrill and frantic. “My mom found out, Richie,” he cried. “Holy shit, she found out, holy fuck, holy _shit_ —” 

Richie’s blood ran cold, his head reeling. “What the fuck? _How?_ ” 

“Your mom came by to talk to her about the trip—”

His _mom?_ But she _hated_ Sonia Kaspbrak. She would _never_ go _see_ her.

“ _What?_ ” he spluttered.

“I _know,_ man,” Eddie wailed. “Holy shit, Richie, she’s so fucking mad, dude. I don’t think she’s ever gonna let me leave the house _again._ I’m grounded for the rest of the _school year,_ she’s saying I can’t ever _see_ you again, I don’t know what I’m gonna _do_ —”

“Eds, it’ll be okay,” Richie said, trying to be calm, even though he felt like peeling the skin from his face. “She’s gotta let you go to school, you’ll see me, and you’ll see Stan and Bill, too. This’ll pass by the summer, she’ll forget about it, or she’ll…” _She’ll decide you’re sick, and forgive you because of it,_ he wanted to say. “It’ll be like that time you got that bloody nose from that grounder,” he said. “Remember? She really had a bird at that one, didn’t she? But eventually she forgot, and you could play with us again.”

Eddie breathed in shuddering jerks on the other line. Richie could tell he was calming down, which was good, because Richie needed to scream until he tore his own throat out.

“You all right, Eds?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yeah.” A long breath crackled painfully down the line. “I gotta go, Rich,” he whispered. “She disconnected the phone in the kitchen and told me to go to my room, but I had to call you so I used the one in her bedroom. If she catches me, I’m grounded ’til I’m forty.”

“And how would that be different from how you have it anyway?” Richie asked, trying to tease.

“Fuck you, man,” Eddie hissed. He paused. “I’m sorry, Richie. I really wanted to go with you.”

“I—”

The line clicked. Dial tone. He slammed it down, and again and again for good measure, until he heard it beginning to creak in his hand. Then he stumbled back into his room, sent his duffel and comics and tapes crashing to his floor with a sweep of his arm, and threw himself face-down on his bed, streaming tears and feeling so sick to his stomach that he wanted to reach in and claw out his organs.

An unknown amount of time later, he heard the front door open and close, and then footsteps on the stairs. He knew his mom was coming to talk to him, and he longed for the strength to get up and lock his door. Instead, he just lifted his head from the salt-wet pillow and turned it the opposite way, toward the wall.

A courtesy knock on his door, a creak of the hinges. “Rich?” His mom’s voice was tentative but hard-tinged. 

Oh, she was mad at him, on top of betraying him. Cool.

“What,” he said, deadpan, not turning.

“I talked to Sonia Kaspbrak,” she said, floor groaning as she stepped into his room. “She didn’t know anything about our trip.”

Richie squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to sob. He felt so angry, so stupid, and so hurt all at once. 

“Why did you talk to her?” he asked. “You don’t even _like_ her.”

“We were supposed to be driving her son for twelve hours roundtrip, taking him out of school for two days,” she said, and sat on the bed. “Eddie was going to be in our care. Of course I had to talk to her.”

Richie didn’t reply. He clenched a fist in his pillowcase.

She sighed, grave. “You shouldn’t have tried to lie to us, Richie.”

“I wasn’t trying to _lie,_ ” he protested, lifting his head to glare at her for the first time. She met his red, itching eyes, unwavering. “She never would have let him go otherwise! And it would have been _fine,_ if you just hadn’t told her—”

“Well, how did you think that was going to go, Richie?” Maggie asked, and he dropped his head back to the pillow with a huff.

“She wouldn’t have found out ’til we were long gone,” he mumbled into the pillow, muffled, “and then Eddie’d call her from the hotel, and she’d hear how much fun he was having, and she’d have to let him stay with me and she couldn’t do anything about it.”

It sounded so stupid, to say it all out loud.

But Maggie didn’t laugh; she just hummed. “Eddie is a nice boy,” she said gently, “and Mrs. Kaspbrak can be difficult. But she is his mother, Richie. You can’t… _trick_ her into letting him come with us. Do you have any idea how upset I’d be if someone took _you_ away like that? Even if I knew and trusted them?”

“It’s not the same,” he protested. “She’s the _worst._ It’s like she doesn’t even care if he’s happy.”

Maggie stroked his head. “I’m sure she does, in her own way.”

But Richie didn’t know how that could possibly be true. He’d _seen_ Eddie’s face when he invited him, had _seen_ his eyes light up and crackle when Richie said Eddie could fly out his front door and straight into the Toziers’ silver sedan in the spilled-yolk light of dawn and Richie would be waiting to whisk him away, and he couldn’t fathom _ever_ telling Eddie no. 

He clenched his teeth until they hurt, grinding into each other. He— he _loves_ Eddie. And he knew that was a huge, multitudinous word, knew that he didn’t understand all of its sides quite yet, but the sides he could see, had seen so far in his short life, told him it was true. He loved Eddie. He loved Eddie more than _anyone,_ and it was agony.

He buried his face in his pillow and sobbed.

\- 2017 -

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want us to drive you back, Rich?” Bev asks, stepping back from the hug and craning her neck to look up into his eyes. Her brows are lightly furrowed, concerned. He can barely stand it.

“Don’t you dare,” he responds, holding up his phone so they can see the Lyft interface. “Andrew is supposed to be here in three minutes, and if I ghost another Lyft driver, they’re gonna boot me from the app.”

“A convenient escape from people who care about you,” Bev says shrewdly.

Richie waves her off, avoiding her gaze. “Two minutes now,” he tells her, glancing at his phone. “Go on, get up to your cabin in the woods. Although I can hardly believe you’d want to put yourselves into yet another horror movie scenario. Splashing through sewers looking for a killer clown wasn’t enough for you?”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Ben says, as Bev goes to him. 

“We love you, Rich,” she calls. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, waving as they walk off down the street to find their car. “Love you losers, too. And tell Denbrough he sucks ass for leaving early!”

He clambers into the back of his Lyft when it arrives, but is too tired and drunk to make small talk with the driver. He thinks the guy’s looking at him in the rearview, but he has the decency—and experience driving in L.A.—not to say anything. Richie fiddles with his phone for a while. Lots of birthday texts, missed calls. One from his mom.

Thinking of Maggie Tozier, he remembers all those other birthdays. How every year she let him try again, surely knowing he would fail. Somehow, almost thirty years later, his birthday is still no different. He’s still ripped up inside by Eddie Kaspbrak.

He dials the number, expecting it to go to voicemail. It’s late, there, and a drunk message is good enough for him, at this point.

“Richie?”

Richie nearly drops the phone. “Eds? What the hell are you doing up? It’s like two in the morning your time.”

“Why the fuck are you calling if you didn’t think I’d be up?”

“I just figured I’d leave you a drunk voicemail,” Richie says lightly. “You know, guilt you about not being here for my birthday, tell you how much I miss you, maybe lose my train of thought halfway through. Good shit.”

“Sounds charming.”

“Well, we didn’t know each other when we were in college. I’d really just be, uh, making up for lost time.” Richie scrubs a hand over his face, trying to wake himself up. He wasn’t expecting to have to be coherent enough for a conversation.

“Did you get my text?” Eddie asks.

“Huh? What text?”

“The happy birthday text. I sent it on the day, so it counts.”

Richie scoffs. “A text doesn’t count.”

“What the fuck, yes it does. You said it didn’t count unless I said happy birthday on the day, it was on the day!”

“Yeah, but you didn’t _say_ it; you _typed_ it.”

“Oh, fuck off, you pedant.”

Richie huffs out a laugh. He leans his head against the window, closes his eyes. “You coulda called,” he says. The words come out slurred and naked with longing, but he can’t bring himself to care.

Eddie’s quiet. “Well, we’re talking now,” he offers. “And it’s still your birthday in California for another… forty-seven minutes.”

“Technicality,” Richie mutters, wanting to cry.

“Rich,” Eddie says, so gently. “I really am sorry I missed so many of your birthdays. You know you mean more to me than that, right?”

Richie squeezes his eyes shut. His palms, his fingertips, are tingling painfully. “Shut up, post-therapy Eddie,” he says. “I can’t handle you right now. Put pre-therapy Eddie back on the phone.”

“Go fuck yourself, dude.”

“I am literally on my way in the Lyft right now, Eds.”

The joke lands on a delay. Then Eddie laughs once, high-pitched, incredulous. “Seriously? That’s your plan when you get home?”

“Well, no one else is gonna do it,” Richie laughs. “Gotta pick myself up by my bootstraps and do it myself. Isn’t that something our super-cool new president would say? Did you vote for him? I bet you did, you prick. You’re on Wall Street. You think polos are casual wear.”

“I was still in the hospital during the election.”

“That’s only kind of an answer, and you know it.”

“Really, this is what we’re talking about right now?” Eddie asks, annoyed. “Happy fucking birthday to you.”

Richie waits on the line.

Eddie sighs. “I’ve never been super into politics, Rich. I probably wouldn’t have voted at all, even if I hadn’t been confined to a hospital bed. That’s the truth.”

“Not making a choice is still a choice, Eddie,” Richie says.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, quiet. “It’s taken me a long time to realize that.”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Richie warns. “That sounds like therapy Eddie to me. I specifically said I don’t want him.”

“Well, that’s who I am now, asshole, so shut the fuck up and take it.”

Richie laughs. “Ooh, say that again, Eds, that’ll really help move things along when this Lyft ride is over.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ah, a ‘fuck you’,” he sighs, “and on my own birthday.”

“Well, what the hell do you want from me, Richie?” Eddie demands. “You get mad when I’m nice, you get mad when I’m mean—”

“No, actually, I get mad when you _ignore_ me,” Richie says, too harsh.

Eddie huffs, frustrated. “What the fuck, man, I don’t ignore you.”

“Oh, okay,” Richie drawls, “then what do _you_ call ghosting the entire group chat after I finally tell you guys I’m gayer than Rufus Wainwright singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’?”

Eddie sputters indignantly. “I said I was proud of you.”

“Well, it’s not like I won the goddamn spelling bee, Eddie,” Richie bursts out. “I’m _gay._ It’s not a fucking accomplishment.”

“No shit, dude, I know you didn’t, like, _achieve gay._ ”

Richie snorts, in spite of his anger. Eddie’s always funniest when they’re arguing. It’s not fair.

“I was proud of you for being brave enough to tell us,” Eddie goes on. “And then tell the rest of the world. And also proud of you for—” he exhales in frustration, crackling down the line “—I don’t fucking know, deciding to try to finally be yourself for real. God knows that’s something to be proud of. For fuck’s sake.”

Richie lets the line go quiet. He can hear Eddie breathing, loud, angry. He wonders where he is. In his dark bedroom, propped against hypoallergenic pillows? No, he wouldn’t want to wake up his wife. Maybe in his kitchen, granite countertops, stainless steel stovetop with the dim yellow overhead light. Richie’s not sure what it actually looks like, he’s never seen the inside of Eddie’s house, but he’s sure it’s fancy and proper and sterile. The opposite of Richie’s squat bungalow, with the dishes in the sink and the old mail on the floor and the shower he knows he should clean more often than he does, which is never.

Richie peers through the two front seats to look at the GPS on the driver’s phone. Twelve minutes remain in the drive.

“Did you get a letter from Stan?” he asks.

He can practically hear Eddie’s head jerk in surprise. “What?”

“Stan sent us all letters, before he—” Richie swallows. “Mine said to ‘be proud’, but Bill’s didn’t. He sent me a picture, and his didn’t say it.”

“Oh,” says Eddie. “Yeah, I did.”

“So I guess Stan knew about me the whole time, the smug bastard.”

“Well,” says Eddie, haltingly, “mine didn’t say it, so.”

“Yeah, no shit, dude,” Richie snorts. “What’d you think it was gonna say, ‘Be proud of Richie’?”

Eddie is quiet for several stretching seconds. “Are you almost back to your place, Rich?” he finally asks.

Richie glances at the GPS again. “Ten minutes, Eddie my love,” he sings, “and then you can be rid of me.”

“Stop it, man, I’m not trying to get rid of you. I’m never trying to get rid of you.”

“You can’t, anyway. I’m like a barnacle. I’m like a… like a verruca, that’s the fancy word for ‘wart’, right?” He yawns. “Like the girl from _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory._ The one who wants the golden goose.” And suddenly Richie feels just like that, greedy, but instead of golden eggs and a million balloons and performing baboons, all he’s ever wanted is for Eddie to look at him. His stomach churns, ashamed.

“I remember watching that at your house,” Eddie’s saying fondly. “That Teavee kid always reminded me of you.”

“Oh yeah? Well, Alex P. Keaton always reminded me of you when we were kids. His little ties and suspenders.”

“I didn’t wear ties and suspenders as a kid.”

“The phrase _as a kid_ is doing a lot in that sentence, Eds,” he says. The idea of Eddie in suspenders, though. Eddie in suspenders telling him to shut up and take it. He swallows and shifts in the backseat. 

“Well, you know who else always reminded me of you?”

“Who?” Richie asks, setting him up.

“Fuckin’ Alf.”

Richie laughs, loud. The Lyft driver twitches in the front. “Inaccurate, Eds,” he chides. “Alf eats way more pussy than I ever could.”

“Booo…”

“Aw, c’mon, that might be the last cat-equals-pussy joke Rich Tozier ever makes. You’re a witness to history. Yeah, right here is good,” he says, motioning to the Lyft driver to pull over, beside his neighbor’s drought-resistant garden, “by the cactus that looks like it’s out of a Tex Avery cartoon.”

“Are you almost home?” Eddie asks. He sounds relieved, tired. Probably longing for his warm bed. His wife.

“Yep, but I’m not hanging up until I get in the door,” Richie says, heaving himself out of the SUV with a groan. “So you’ll know if I get mugged on my doorstep. Here in fuckin’ Inglewood. Where people’s dogs cost more than my first car.” 

He slams the car door behind him and stumbles down the sidewalk. It’s nearly midnight now, and properly chilly, the way people don’t think it gets in California. There’s fucking snow, here, though. Not _here_ here, not in Inglewood, no. But California has mountains, distant, hazy, with snowy caps you can see between the lanky palm trees as lava rocks lodge in your sweat-stained sandals. The landscape of California is just as devoid of a distinctive identity as the people who live there.

Or maybe that’s not true. Not charitable. The charitable truth is, California is whatever people want it to be. Twenty years ago, for Richie, that was an escape, a place to make a name for himself among people who didn’t already know it. But he’s not sure what he wants it to be anymore.

“My first car was a 1985 Chevy Cavalier, in case you were wondering,” he goes on, just to keep him on the line. “I got it senior year.”

“I wish you’d had a car when I lived there,” says Eddie. “Maybe we could have just… left.”

“I know _I_ would have,” says Richie. “I barely finished high school, once I had wheels. Probably why my parents made me save up for it myself instead of getting me one.”

“You really would have just left everything behind that easily, huh?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah, dude, you know this. I only talked about it, like, every day.”

“I remember.” Richie thinks he sounds accusatory.

“Hey, man, it was different for you,” Richie says, defensive. “You didn’t have Bowers and them calling you a fag and people writing that you, quote, _suck flamer cock_ on the bathroom stall.”

“You think I didn’t have it bad? I lived with my mom, Richie, you know what she was like. At least your parents were nice.”

“Yeah, sure. But— Aw, _fuck,_ ” says Richie, groaning as he turns up his driveway. 

“What?”

“I didn’t turn my porch light on. It’s gonna be a pain in the ass to get my key in the goddamn door. Dammit, I coulda sworn…”

“You don’t have a motion-sensor light? No wonder you’re worried about muggers. Or burglars.”

“Not all of us choose to spend our money on prison-level security at our abodes, Edward.” His keys jangle as he pulls them out of his pocket. He identifies the one for the front door and starts fumbling for the lock, squinting in the dark. “I bet you’re safer’n the gold at Fort Knox right now at your place, huh?”

“I’m, uh.” Eddie clears his throat. “I’m not living at my place anymore. Actually.”

“What? Really?”

The key slides in and turns. Richie steps into his pitch-dark home and fumbles for the light switch. When the overhead light turns on, illuminating his small living room, he nearly jumps out of his skin. His phone clatters to the floor.

In the middle of his living room, standing in that awkward slender space between the sofa and the coffee table, phone held to his ear, is Eddie Kaspbrak.

“Uhh,” he says, smiling uneasily, “surpriiise, Richie.”

\- 1992 -

For Richie’s sixteenth birthday, he didn’t tell his parents what he wanted. He had a part-time job at the movie theater and didn’t need his parents to pay for cupcakes or scary movies or endless cascading arcade tokens. He was basically a fucking adult, although the part-time job and the disposable income burning a hole in his pocket weren’t why. 

It was three years since they had killed It. Three years since the other Losers had begun trickling out of Derry like sand in an hourglass. First Bev, that very summer; then Bill, the following spring. And finally, on a stark gray December day just a few months before Richie’s birthday, Stan, Stan the Man, Richie’s best and oldest friend, flew south for the winter. 

Richie told himself _finally_ because Stan had better fucking be the final one to leave. He couldn’t stand it if he had to say goodbye to anyone else. Especially not…

Well.

Saying goodbye made Richie feel old, but never hearing from any of them again made him feel _ancient,_ like those people you’d hear about on the news who live to be a hundred and three and when asked what they think of death just shrug and look vaguely annoyed, like they’re checking their watch. _Actually, I thought it was supposed to be here by now._

“The _minute_ I turn eighteen, I’m getting the fuck outta Dodge,” Richie said to Eddie after Stan left, sitting in his windowsill and flicking his lighter on and off against the biting January cold. “That’s a Richie Tozier gua-rawn-tee.” 

From the bed, Eddie looked at him over his chemistry textbook. He had a tartan fleece blanket drawn over his shoulders like a cape against the air from the open window. Eddie always ran cold, but Richie ran _hot_ and Mrs. Kaspbrak kept the whole house boiling in the winters. Any time he came over, he’d open Eddie’s bedroom window and sit directly in it, relishing the bite on his cheeks, the numbing of his nose, against the suffocating heat inside, while Eddie drew a blanket around him, resentful. Richie always wondered why he didn’t tell him just to get lost. 

“Why?” Eddie asked.

“Why?” Richie spluttered, aghast. “Whaddaya mean, _why?_ Because Derry sucks a fat dick, Eds. It’s a living fucking nightmare full of dumbfuck hicks that can’t trace a family tree without getting their lines crossed.”

Eddie drew the blanket tighter around him, glaring. “Well, fuck you, too.”

Richie rolled his eyes. “You know I’m not talking about _you,_ dumbass.”

“Okay, fucker, but I do live in Derry.”

“Right, so you know how much it sucks,” Richie said, swinging his legs into the room and standing. He closed the window behind him with a ka- _thunk_ and went to sit at the foot of the bed. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t take any fucking chance you could to get outta this shithole.”

Eddie’s eyebrows were knitted tightly, a wrinkled knot between them, and something made Richie feel like reaching out and pushing it with his thumb, a button that could uncoil Eddie’s tension like a spring. A vision of pressing his lips to that spot between his brows flashed before Richie’s eyes, and he looked down at his hands. His stomach twisted guiltily at the thought.

Eddie wasn’t like _that,_ Richie knew. Like him. Last year, Eddie had told Ben he had a crush on Cissy Clark because of her long, blonde hair and painted nails. Afterward, Richie had idly colored the nails on his left hand in with a black Sharpie during class and got shoved into his locker by Gard Jagermeyer for being a fucking fairy.

“I guess it would depend,” Eddie finally said.

Richie’s jaw dropped. “It would _depend?_ On _what?_ Whether or not you could set fire to this whole damn town on your way out? Because that would only sweeten the deal for me, lemme tell ya.”

Eddie frowned at him. “I just don’t get how you can say you want to leave when you know how shitty it feels to be left behind.”

“That’s exactly why I’m getting the fuck _out._ No fucking way am I gonna be the last one left. I’d rather walk back into Neibolt.”

Eddie shuddered. “Don’t say that, Richie.”

“Why not? It’s the fucking _truth,_ ” Richie said. “If everyone’s gonna leave anyway, I’d rather do it to you before you do it to me. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Well, then how about you get some practice right now and _leave_ my fucking _house?_ ” Eddie shot back, heated. “I need to study, since I’m actually planning to go to college and invest in my future. Unlike _some_ people.”

“Fuckin’ gladly.” Richie stomped out of Eddie’s bedroom and down the stairs. He let the door slam on his way out, ignoring Mrs. Kaspbrak’s squawk of indignation and nearly tripping over his untied shoelace as he stumbled down the porch stairs. He shoved a cigarette between his teeth and told himself he was happy to leave because Eddie never let him smoke in his house.

He plunged his hands into his coat pockets and kicked at a snowdrift, sending up a shower of white, as he turned onto the sidewalk. He and Eddie had been fighting more than usual, both more frequently and more ferociously. He thought he knew why. With both Stan and Bill gone, only Richie and Eddie remained of the core of the Losers’ Club. The four of them had balanced each other from the beginning, Bill and Stan standing tall and steady while Richie and Eddie careened and spiraled, dogs chasing each other’s tails, madding electrons loop-de-looping but always kept safe from colliding.

Now that the two grounding poles of Bill and Stan had been dug up and carted away, though, he and Eddie had no safeguards. They could only whirl around each other in ever-tightening circles, ping-ponging and flying apart when they got too close. 

And Richie _knew_ he got too close. He’d known for a while, now. That he loved Eddie. That he wanted to be with Eddie. That the way he wanted to be with Eddie was different, and more dangerous, than anything else he’d ever wanted. 

The truth was, he’d always orbited Eddie; he’d just used Stan and Bill to mask his patterns. Without them there, he was exposed, and he was afraid it was only a matter of time until Eddie decoded him. So he needed to either get a better excuse, or get the fuck out of Derry, before he was found out. And since one of those wasn’t an option, he’d decided to focus on the other.

For his sixteenth birthday, Richie didn’t tell his parents what he wanted, because what he wanted was to get absolutely shitfaced.

Mike’s family farm was isolated, and the rickety storage shed was cold enough in early March for Richie to squirrel away the beer he had convinced an older coworker to buy him. He rode his bike out as the sun was setting purple in the indigo sky, his boombox protruding diagonally from the basket, tapes rattling in their plastic cases like pink sprinkles, years before.

Richie didn’t wait for the others to arrive to pop open a beer. He downed most of it in a few big gulps as he snapped the birthday mixtape he had made into the deck and hit play. He intended to be well on his way to trashed by the time Eddie got there.

And if Eddie _didn’t_ get there—because he hadn’t for the past eight years, and no matter how stridently he promised that this time would be different… Well, Richie wasn’t a moron. Trash the Trashmouth was a game he could enjoy on his own.

In the end, he didn’t have to enjoy it on his own. Ben and Mike were there. Ben got rosy-cheeked and sad as the night went on, and Mike wanted to look at the stars and talk philosophy. Both sides of Richie’s mixtape were played through so many times that “Love Bites” was starting to skip and static. Still Eddie didn’t show.

It was close to midnight when Richie left Mike’s farm. He was more than halfway home when he realized he’d forgotten his boombox, and he screamed at the sky in dramatic, impotent frustration and nearly went hurtling over the handlebars when he hit a rock, invisible in the dark. He came to a breathless stop in the middle of the road, his feet splayed on either side of his bike, and tried to get a hold of himself. 

Eddie told him he wanted to come, _promised him_ he would come. Maybe there was a good reason. Maybe he was sick, or hurt, or trapped by his mother in his house. It happened. Anyway, it was still Richie’s birthday, for a little while longer, and he was tall now, tall enough to grip the lowest branch on the tree in Eddie’s side yard if he jumped, walk his legs up the trunk, swing himself up, and shimmy over to the bedroom window, scraping his skin and staining his whole front green and brown. He had done it before; he could do it again. As long as Eddie let him in.

When he got to Eddie’s house, the light was out in his bedroom window. But Richie had gotten what he wanted for his birthday—he was sufficiently shitfaced—so he told himself he didn’t care. He picked up a piece of sod from Mrs. Kaspbrak’s ill-tended garden and tossed it.

Almost immediately, the light turned on. Richie set his jaw and was up the tree before Eddie even opened the window.

When he fell into Eddie’s room, ungainly and ungraceful, he looked up with a grin that quickly died. Eddie’s walls were bare, his desk vacant. There were boxes everywhere, labeled, brimming, stark. 

Eddie was standing in the center of his half-empty room, stepped back from the window to allow Richie space to enter. His hair tousled, he was shivering in flannel pants and an old Van Halen shirt that Richie had grown out of and given him. His shoulders were trembling, his fists clenched at his sides.

“Eddie,” Richie whispered, voice breaking. “What—?” 

“We’re moving,” Eddie said, brutally. His face was blotchy and crinkled, his eyes red. “My mom told me today.”

Richie’s stomach churned. “When?”

“In three days.”

Heat rushed up Richie’s throat, a cruel pressure on the back of his tongue. His stomach roiled.

He threw himself toward the window, gripping hard enough for his fingers to sink into the crumbling, sawdusty wood, and unloaded the watery excess of the night’s beers, clinging to the creaking wooden windowsill, dizzy, overwhelmed. He heard the contents of his stomach spatter on the grass below. He hoped none of it would show on the siding in the light of day.

“Jesus, Richie, what the fuck?” 

He didn’t answer. He only rocked back on his heels, wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, and laid his sweating forehead on the cool, splintered wood. “That’s super soon, Eds,” he rasped into the corner of the sill.

“You think I don’t fucking know that?” Eddie’s voice was sharp, bitter, like the bile Richie could still taste behind his teeth.

“What… What about school?” he asked weakly. “What about your track meet?” 

Eddie laughed darkly. “Yeah, Richie, you’re right,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “I should just tell my mom we can’t move because I have to run the four-hundred-meter in three weeks. That’ll get her to change her mind.”

Richie turned, glaring blearily at him. “Why are you being such a little shit about this?” he asked. “You know what it was like when Stan and Bill and Bev left. It fucking sucked. Being left behind fucking sucks.”

“And you think it doesn’t suck to be the one having to leave?” Eddie demanded, nearly vicious.

Richie barked out a laugh. “Not as much, no. No fucking way.”

“Fuck you.” 

“Fuck _you,_ ” he said back, heated. He staggered to his feet, trying to ignore how dizzy he felt again. “Don’t act like you’re the fucking victim here. Like you’d rather stay behind here in this shithole.”

“I would.”

“Get real.”

“I _would,_ you asshole.”

“Well, you’re a fucking moron, then,” Richie sneered. “I’d give fucking anything to get out.” 

“Yeah, you’ve made that real fucking clear.” Eddie glared ice back at him. “Guess I’m doing it to you before you do it to me.”

They stared at each other until Richie felt his gorge rising again, his eyes prickling hotly, and had to look away. “Well,” he said, turning to go the way he’d come, “happy birthday to me, I guess.”

Eddie drew in a sharp breath, and Richie glanced at him. His face was hazy, quivering, but his big brown eyes were clear and enormous as Richie remembered from second grade. Somehow Eddie never seemed to grow into them, even though the rest of his face had begun to go lean and fuzz over years before. He’d had to start shaving before Richie, he’d told them all smugly, though the following summer when Richie took his shirt off at the quarry and bared the copious black hair sprouting everywhere, Eddie had shut up pretty quick. Eddie’s voice had dropped before Richie’s, too, cracking madly whenever he protested Richie’s teasing, but Richie thought it had settled in a much nicer timbre than his own nasal voice—deep and sharp and thrilling, like Eddie himself. His eyes never changed, though; still too brown, too big, like planets, like _suns._ No wonder Richie had always orbited Eddie. It was a marvel he hadn’t yet been burned up.

“It’s not like I have a choice,” Eddie said. “My mom—”

“I get it,” Richie said. But he didn’t get it. He _couldn’t_ get it. Eddie _did_ have a choice, he thought. Maybe not about this; this was too big. But Eddie had learned about this upheaval and had spent all night in his bedroom packing. He had turned his light off before midnight on Richie’s birthday to go to sleep. He hadn’t dirtied the front of Richie’s old threadbare shirt and biked in the dark to find him. Surely that was a choice on its own.

“I don’t want to leave, Richie,” Eddie said, voice breaking for the first time in years. His brown eyes shone clear, plaintive. Final.

Richie looked back at him. “But you’re going to,” he said simply.

And before Eddie could ask him to, he left.

\- 2017 -

“Eddie?” Richie gapes at him, stupid, then down at his phone. It landed face-up. His call with _Eddie Spaghetti_ is still ongoing. He looks back up at Eddie. He’s still there. In Richie’s living room. In jeans and a hoodie, hair coming un-gelled and falling in his face, five o’clock shadow on his chin. Looking more rumpled and roughshod and ravishing than Richie’s ever seen him.

What the _fuck._

“But,” he sputters, “you’re in Manhattan.”

“Uh, nope,” Eddie says, unmoving, still smiling nervously. He pulls the phone away from his face to end the call with a _beep._ “I’m in, uh... Inglewood, apparently.”

Well, obviously. Still, it does not compute.

“What the fuck—?” Richie steps into his entryway, looking around him as though expecting someone else to appear. Maybe Ashton Kutcher. But no one is hiding behind the door, no one in the kitchen-slash-dining room. His floor is bare. Wait, his floor is bare.

His eyes meet Eddie’s. “Did you move my mail?”

Eddie’s eyebrows twitch. “Seriously? _That’s_ what you—?” He gestures angrily to Richie’s square dining table, where the past three days of mail are stacked neatly. “It was a fucking hazard, man, all slippery on the hardwood. I nearly ate it when I came in.”

Richie snorts. He’s relaxing, now, starting to believe Eddie Kaspbrak really is standing in his living room. “You know what’s a fucking hazard? Waiting in the dark to surprise someone you know for a fact once killed a man with an axe.”

“I only turned off the light when you said you got out of the Lyft,” Eddie says, still not moving from between the sofa and the coffee table. “It’s not like I was waiting here in the dark for an hour.”

“You’ve been here an _hour_?” 

“Give or take.” He shrugs. “Bill picked me up at the airport and gave me the key, and I wanted to, uh… get here before midnight.” He glances at his phone and back up at Richie, meaningful.

Richie’s head is reeling. “Oh,” he says dumbly. “Are you going to turn back into a pumpkin then?”

“No. Just a bad friend, I think.” 

Finally, Richie realizes he’s been standing in his entryway this whole time, the door still open behind him. The breeze drifting in is cool, making Eddie shiver. Eddie always ran cold. He closes the door.

As Richie turns back to the living room, Eddie shuffles sideways out from between the couch and the table. Richie wonders if he’s going to go in for a hug, but he and Eddie have never been huggy—Eddie because of the germs, Richie because of the, frankly, painful longing that wouldn’t be helped by having Eddie pressed against him.

But Eddie’s here. He’s _here._ _What?_

“So when you said you weren’t living at your place anymore,” Richie drawls, stepping forward, “I didn’t realize you meant you’d be living at _my_ place.”

Eddie snorts and shakes his head. “No, dumbass, that was just bad timing,” he says. “Actually, _all_ of this—” he gestures around him, at the whole situation “—was bad timing. Your birthday came at a very inconvenient time for me this year.”

“Actually, it comes at the same time every year _,_ ” he says, grinning.

“I _told_ myself I was going to make it out for your birthday this year,” Eddie says, ignoring Richie’s jab as he takes a step toward him. “I told myself everything was going to be squared away by then, and that I’d spend your birthday with you, for fucking once in my life.”

Richie twitches, feeling suddenly on edge, alight. Eddie is staring at him, eyes big and deep, cast in shadow in his hangdog face by the overhead light, and something in the cut of his cheek, the set of his jaw, is determined, inexorable. Richie feels pinned in place. He gulps.

“What do you mean, ‘everything was going to be squared away’?” he asks.

Eddie stops his march forward, a few feet from Richie. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, seemingly steeling himself. As he breathes in, Richie can see the fabric of the thin white t-shirt under his hoodie stretch across his chest, jagged and asymmetrical but still warm, still alive, still _here._

He opens his eyes. They lock with Richie’s, unflinching. “I asked Myra for a divorce,” he says.

Richie stares back at him, agog. “You _what—_?”

“Because I’m gay.”

All the breath goes out of Richie in a _whoosh._ His brain is fizzing, light and dizzy. He looks around him to lean on something, anything, but the closest thing is Eddie, who is watching Richie warily, his hands splayed open like he might need to catch him.

“Are you gonna throw up again?” he asks tensely.

Richie laughs, a little shrieky, ignoring the churn of his stomach. “Me, throw up? Nahh. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown up.”

Eddie snorts. “If you throw up after I tell you I’m gay, you can never get mad at me for saying I was proud of you ever again.”

Richie holds two hands upturned, like scales, weighing the two responses, one in each hand, and they’re evening out. Eddie rolls his eyes.

His mind is speeding, breakneck, a mile a minute, a second. Eddie’s getting a _divorce_? Eddie’s gay, too? _Eddie’s gay, too,_ and he flew to California to be in Richie’s house before midnight so he could see him for his _birthday_?

Richie knows not to assume, he knows what it makes of you and me, but these dots are really fucking hard not to connect. He tries to swallow down the hope bubbling in his throat, tries not to put the cart before the horse, not to count his chickens, not to do any number of barnyard animal metaphors that mean _leap to gay-ass conclusions about the love of your life, Richie._

“So,” he says, attempting boldly to regain his bearings. “You’re saying you’re _not_ moving in.”

Eddie laughs at that, his eyes crinkling. He shakes his head. “No, I’m not moving in,” he says.

“Okay.”

“At least, not until the divorce is final.”

Richie’s brain makes that little _zapff_ noise that lightbulbs make when they fizzle out. His mouth drops open as Eddie takes another step forward, solidly entering Richie’s space, within arm’s reach. He’s smiling more tentatively now, eyebrows bowed upwards, unsure.

“Uh, I don’t know if that’s something you would be interested in,” he’s saying nervously, and it might be the dumbest thing Eddie Kaspbrak has ever said, but Richie doesn’t have the marbles to tell him so right now. “I kept putting off telling you because I thought there would be a perfect time. When I left the hospital, or after we killed It, or... fuck, when we graduated from high school. And I was a fucking mess, or dying, or gone and forgot you. So it kept not happening. I kept _not_ making a choice, or worse, letting other people make them for me. And like you said, not making a choice is still a choice. So, I decided I ought to finally choose for myself.” 

He takes another uncertain step forward, a question in his expression, like he’s waiting for Richie to tell him no. Richie is still rooted to the spot, struck dumb. Trying so, so hard not to count any chickens.

Seeing Richie is not going to interrupt him, Eddie licks his lips and goes on, “When we talked on the phone yesterday, I felt like such shit, man,” he confesses, shaking his head. “I had to lie to you, you know. About why I couldn’t come. It wasn’t work; it was because of divorce bullshit. I couldn’t tell you because… because for some reason I had decided I didn’t want to tell you about the divorce until it was over. Until I was free. I thought if I told you about it, I’d have to tell you why, and I wanted that to be in person. And I had decided I didn’t want to see you in person until the divorce was over, because—” He breaks off. “You can see the circular logic, right? Fucking stupid.” He lets out a weak chuckle.

Richie shoves his glasses back up his nose. “Because?” he asks, voice husky and wet from the lump in his throat.

Eddie looks at him, and he’s so close now that he has to look _up,_ has to tilt those big, brown, devastating eyes up into Richie’s.

“Because if I saw you in person,” he murmurs, “I knew I would want to kiss you.”

Richie’s heart is pounding in his chest, his throat, behind his eyes. Stinging wetness leaps to them, too, like it has for all his birthdays before, when Eddie never showed. 

But he’s here now.

He swallows around the wad of hopes and dreams and _everything you’ve ever wanted_ that’s lodged in his throat. His eyes are welling, blurring the room. He breaks eye contact, sniffing, and his voice is wet when he huffs, “What time is it?”

It’s an incongruous thing to ask, but Eddie doesn’t flinch. He checks his phone. “It’s 11:56.”

“Oh,” says Richie. “Good.”

Eddie looks up at him, bemused. “Do you want to wait for midnight?”

Richie laughs, a snorfling sound in his throat. “ _No,_ ” he says, forcefully, but he still can’t find it in him to move. It’s taking everything in him to hold it together enough not to wail.

So Eddie steps forward, lifts his hand to Richie’s cheek, and Richie feels like his entire being, body and soul, is vibrating, resonating out from the tingle of Eddie’s fingertips on his coarse sideburns. 

“Rich.”

Richie doesn’t realize he closed his eyes until he has to open them again. A tear spills out as he does, running in an uneven, ticklish path until Eddie, frowning, wipes it with his thumb.

“This is okay, right?” Eddie asks, gaze sweeping his face. “You’re not crying because you actually hate me, are you?”

“I’m not crying, you’re crying,” Richie nearly sobs.

Eddie laughs. “Dumbass,” he whispers and, strong and sure, guides Richie’s face to his.

When their mouths meet, it isn’t fireworks, it isn’t starbursts. It’s storebought frosting on a sharp chin; it’s buttery palms held in a dark, stale-scented theater; it’s outgrown, threadbare t-shirts that still smell like you, long after he’s gone and forgotten your name. It’s climbing a tree at midnight. It’s sobbing into a pillow. It’s leaning back in a barn shed, thin beer on your lips, singing _I don’t wanna touch you too much,_ and wanting to touch so much you would open up your chest and pull out your heart for him to hold if it could get him to look at you. 

It’s all of that. It’s years and years of missed opportunities, missed birthdays, choices not made, choices made by others, and none of it matters, because he’s here now, and he’s kissing you, like he wanted to touch you just as much.

Eddie’s mouth, slanted across Richie’s, is thin and sweet, a sliver of pink fruit, and Richie licks at his bottom lip, tentatively. Eddie opens willingly, eagerly even, as though he had only been waiting for a sign, and slides his hands down to Richie’s chest, twists his fingers in the fabric of Richie’s shirt, stepping fully into him. He sighs and his tense shoulders relax, sloping, and Richie wraps his arms around Eddie, drawing him close, into Richie’s warmth. Eddie runs cold but right now he’s thawing, soaking up the heat from Richie’s body, and Richie wants to give it to him, give him everything he has, because it has always been his anyway.

They break apart but Eddie doesn’t step back, just pulls Richie’s forehead to his and breathes, heavily, as though he’s climbed a mountain. Richie presses a light kiss to his mouth, wondering, and when he feels the slight muscles of Eddie kissing back again, a second time, as though there could be a third time, a fourth, a hundredth, a millionth, tears leap to his eyes again.

“High school?” he echoes, raspy.

“Huh?” 

“You said,” Richie whispers, “when we graduated from high school, you wanted…”

Eddie dips his head, cheeks flushing. “Uh, yeah,” he coughs. “I kinda… And _don’t_ laugh.” He jabs a finger into Richie’s breastbone, face going hard, so Richie holds up his hands in surrender. “But I think I, uh, had a crush on you in high school.”

Richie stares at him for a moment until the laughter spills out, unbidden. “Dude,” he says.

“Dude _me?_ Dude _you!_ ” Eddie exclaims, stepping back. “I told you not to laugh!”

That just makes Richie laugh even harder. He drags Eddie back to his chest, despite halfhearted protests, and buries his face in his hair, pressing kisses to his temple, his bony cheek, the shell of his ear. “Dude,” he says again, because he has to, “I was, like, in love with you in high school.”

Eddie freezes in his arms and then relaxes, his hand going to Richie’s back, rubbing over his spine. “Really?”

Richie nods. “Yes,” he says. “Remember my sixteenth birthday?” 

“Of course.” Eddie’s tone has a tinge of mourning. 

“I was drunk when I came in your window, I don’t know if you knew,” he says. 

Eddie shakes his head against him, fingertips still running over the notches of his spine. 

“I wanted to get drunk that night so I could… I don’t know, man. Hold your fuckin’ hand, or lay my head in your lap and ask you to pet my hair, or something gay as hell like that, and blame it on the beer,” Richie says.

He feels Eddie’s lips curl up against his clavicle. “I wanted that, too. I think,” he says into the bone, and Richie feels it resonating down his sternum, vibrating his ribs. “I don’t think I even realized how much I wanted it. When I found out we were moving, the first thing I did was dig out that Van Halen shirt you gave me and put it on and I… I _smelled_ it,” he confesses, a tinge of horror in his tone.

Richie chuckles and tightens his arms around him, mouth on his spicy-smelling hair, still stiff and crackly with gel.

“It was in the _laundry,_ Rich,” Eddie goes on, “and I pulled it out. The _dirty_ laundry. I didn’t even care. That’s how much I liked you.” 

Something about that, probably the _Eddie Kaspbrak_ of it all, makes Richie raise his face from Eddie’s scalp so he can see him again. Eddie lifts his face, too, turns it up to Richie’s, and his eyes flick to Richie’s slightly open mouth, just once, and he breathes a little _oh,_ and then Richie’s mouth is on Eddie’s again, hard and wet and crushing. He buries one hand in his hair, the other grasped tight on his hip, and pulls their bodies flush together, chests and stomachs, pressed tight, and Eddie is pulling them even tighter, tilting his head to slip his tongue through Richie’s lips and lick behind his teeth.

Richie groans and slides his thigh between Eddie’s legs. His eyes roll back in his skull when Eddie— _Eddie Kaspbrak_ —grinds his crotch against it and _moans._

“Ho-oly shit, Eds,” Richie grunts into his mouth, urging him on with the hand on his hip, thoughts of hand-holding and hair-petting catching fire and curling into smoky images of Eddie rutting against his leg, fingers stuffed in Richie’s mouth, using Richie’s body to get himself off, _fuck._

Not breaking their kiss, which has turned scorching, tongues sliding, wet heat, the kind not seen in California, not in the desert where Richie’s been living, he pushes at Eddie’s shoulders, guiding him backwards toward the couch. When the backs of Eddie’s thighs hit the cushion, though, Eddie turns his face from Richie’s mouth, gasping when Richie kisses down his neck.

“Actually, can we, uh…” Eddie clears his throat, seeming suddenly uncomfortable. Richie breaks away and eyes him, fearful. “Go to the bedroom?”

Richie’s body floods with relief. “Why, Edward,” he cooes, fluttering his eyelashes. “Are you going to break my headboard?”

Eddie grimaces. “What? No. It’s just…” He jerks a thumb at the corner of the room, by the TV. 

Bobbing there in the dark, still smiling, arms spread wide, is Pikachu. And his other, littler Pikachu, just as excited as Richie—and littler Richie—are starting to feel.

Richie rests his forehead on Eddie’s shoulder, shoulders shaking with laughter. “Still not all right with balloons?”

“Not ones that stare back,” says Eddie, shifting under Richie’s palms. “So, bedroom?”

“Yes, of course.” He uses his hands on Eddie’s hips to turn him around, pointing him down the hallway, and then gives his ass a smack for good measure, just to test if he can. Eddie jumps and slaps at Richie’s elbow in annoyance, grumbling, but otherwise puts up no resistance. Richie is in _love._ “Tally-ho!” he crows, tapping at the backs of Eddie’s thighs, between his winging shoulderblades.

“Please don’t,” Eddie groans, but allows Richie to herd him down the darkened hallway.

Richie’s bedroom door is open, moonlight spilling through the sliding glass doors that take up the far wall. He steps through past Eddie, considering the lightswitch, but when he glances over at Eddie, the silver light has cast him in marble, statuesque, and it steals his breath. He steps back into him, crowding him against the wall and covering his mouth with his, whining when Eddie’s fingers move to the top button of his shirt and begin the work of shucking it off him like cornsilk.

“Jesus, how the fuck am I getting hard just from kissing?” Eddie mutters, breaking away. He presses his forehead to Richie’s shoulder as the denim of his jeans scrapes over Richie’s slacks. “Fuckin’ embarrasing.”

“Don’t feel bad, Eds,” Richie laughs, sliding a hand around Eddie’s hip to his own crotch, pressing. “If I’d had any less to drink, I’d be right there with you. I’m catching up fast as it is.”

Eddie’s head jerks up, his eyes narrowing. “That’s right,” he says, removing his hands. “You’re drunk. We shouldn’t, uh— I would be taking advantage if we—”

Richie throws his head back in a short, sharp laugh. “Eds gets off a good one,” he says, and leans in for another kiss.

But Eddie frowns. “I’m serious, Richie,” he murmurs, practically into his mouth. “I don’t think it’s a good idea—”

“Eddie, one,” Richie says, holding up a finger, “I only had like three drinks at dinner, I am barely drunk anymore.” Eddie lets out a high-pitched noise of disbelief that Richie swallows when he presses his mouth back to Eddie’s, quick, because he can. “And two,” he goes on, voice pitching lower, “I have been waiting for more than thirty years to touch you like this. Please don’t make me wait any longer.”

The noise that rips from Eddie’s chest is wild and deep, more delicious than any yet. It vibrates through his chest as he tangles his fingers in the hair at Richie’s nape and crushes their lips together. Richie’s hand goes to the small of his back, his ring finger alighting on hot, smooth flesh where Eddie’s shirt has ridden up.

Eddie puts his hands to Richie’s broad chest, allows them to linger there for a moment, scalding, before shoving him back. Richie’s eyes widen behind his glasses, afraid that Eddie is calling it off. But then Eddie is following after him, pushing him to the bed so he’s sitting, and then lying down, and Eddie is climbing over him, resting on his hips. His fingers return to the buttons, making short work of them and baring Richie’s undershirt.

“Eddie,” Richie whispers, gaze full of him in the starlight. 

He doesn’t respond, eyes huge and black, as he runs the flat of his hands over Richie’s chest, scraping fingernails through the coarse hair escaping at the collar, drawing a moan from Richie. He’s well and truly hard now, his dick throbbing in his slacks. The hard line of Eddie’s dick is prominent in his jeans, too; must be excruciating. His fingers twitch at the thought.

“Eddie,” he whispers again, lifting his hands to Eddie’s waist, feeling the taut sinew at his side. “I want you so fuckin’ bad.”

“I want you, too,” Eddie breathes, and Richie’s hips buck up, unbidden, drawing a hiss from his teeth. “What did you have in mind?” His hands skate over Richie’s shoulders and down his arms, back up to his traps, squeezing, his eyes going just the slightest bit glassy in the silvery light.

Richie closes his eyes, a million past fantasies hurtling behind his eyes. He palms Eddie’s hips. God, the feel of him in his hands. “I don’t even know, Eds,” he groans honestly, opening his eyes again to look. “I’m pretty sure I have thought of literally every way to be with you there is. Like I said, it’s been thirty years.”

Eddie frowns. “But we forgot about each other for most of that.”

“I forgot your name,” Richie says, hoarse, “but I didn’t forget that I wanted you.”

It doesn’t say everything he wants to say—that he spent years looking for… not Eddie Kaspbrak, because he didn’t know Eddie Kaspbrak existed, but _him_ nonetheless, his essence, his _soul,_ because Richie doesn’t believe in shit like that but he actually really _does._ He always knew that he had always been missing something, looking for someone that he had never been able to find until he walked into that godforsaken Chinese restaurant in Derry fucking Maine. He doesn’t have the words to say all of that right now, though, not with the weight of Eddie pressing him into the mattress.

But Eddie’s eyes bore into his, and Richie thinks he sees understanding flash through them, married to a rising hunger. With a groan, Eddie’s hands grasp either side of Richie’s face and he falls down to crush their lips together, hot and wet, open-mouthed, filthy.

Richie groans and bucks his hips up against Eddie, and Eddie moans into his mouth, and now his pants really are far too tight. His fingers tuck through Eddie’s belt loops and yank him down so Richie can thrust up against him, seeking a better kind of friction, and Eddie pulls his mouth away with a wet noise to press kisses down Richie’s chin, sucking a bruise into the cord of his neck while his hands tug insistently at Richie’s shirt.

Getting the hint, Richie twists and wriggles himself out of the overshirt, which is still hanging from his arms, and then Eddie yanks the undershirt up and over Richie’s head, catching on his glasses and sending them askew. 

“Agh,” Richie grunts, catching the glasses before they go flying with the shirt.

“Sorry,” Eddie mutters, not even bothering to look over. His hands are immediately on Richie’s shoulders, his chest, his arms, his soft stomach, tugging at the hair below his belly button and sending a jolt straight to his cock. His hips twitch upward, and Eddie grinds down in answer. “Fuck, Rich, you look so good,” he groans, and he sounds so sincere Richie can’t even bring himself to call him a liar.

Instead, he dips his fingers under the waistband of Eddie’s pants and asks, “What do _you_ want, Eds?”

Eddie stills. His eyes are wide and starry, like he’s been caught in someone’s brights. “What do I want?” he echoes.

“Or, what are you _okay_ with?” Richie tries again, running his hands reassuringly over Eddie’s sides, the wiry muscle that he must be painstakingly regaining in his recovery. His skin is warm through the thin cotton. “Since apparently you don’t want to fuck me for the first time when I’m drunk. Ish.”

When Richie says the words _fuck me for the first time,_ Eddie’s pupils dilate almost imperceptibly. He sucks in a breath. “You— you want me to—?”

“I mean, yeah,” Richie says, going warm at the edge in his voice. “Or the other way, I guess, but the first time I always imagined—”

“No, yeah, no, I think I would—” Eddie clears his throat, swallows, nods once. “I think so. That I would. Too. Like that.”

Richie’s stomach clenches, heat pooling. He just told Eddie he wanted him to fuck him, and he basically said yes. Holy _fuck._

But not right now. Because of his three drinks at dinner. Oh, and the seven-and-seven he had beforehand. Even though he feels fine. Better than fine! He feels fantastic: more awake and alive than he’s felt since he fell through Eddie’s bedroom window and saw the sharp, cardboard cubes that had appeared to cart him away from Derry.

He’d forgiven Bill for being weird at dinner since he apparently knew about Eddie, but on second thought, _fuck_ Bill Denbrough for not telling him about this. Richie could have drunk only the purest spring water and happily gotten railed by the love of his life.

“Mm, yeah, talk dirty to me just like that, Eddie, baby,” he growls, tugging Eddie down so he can press his face to his neck and lick a long, wide stripe up to his ear.

“Ack, Richie!” Eddie shoves at his face, laughing, and the tension breaks a little. If Eddie’s not gonna fuck him right now, he might as well get that specific thought right out of his head.

“Tell me what you want, baby,” he growls in his ear, and Eddie whimpers at it, propped up on one elbow by Richie’s shoulder. 

Eddie’s breath ghosts over Richie’s ear, his cheek, as he lifts his head. “Uhh… I believe you, uh.” He swallows, his face flushed. His eyes flicker to Richie’s and then away. “Said something about fucking yourself?”

Heat floods Richie’s body. He licks his lips. “Yeah?” he whispers. “You wanna see what I was gonna do if you weren’t here, Eds?”

Eddie doesn’t protest the nickname—he hasn’t protested it all night, Richie realizes. He only nods. The look he gives Richie is _searing._ “Yeah, Rich,” he says, low. “I want to see you come all over yourself, moaning.”

Richie shivers. “Fuck.”

Eddie blanches. “What? Too much? I’ve never—”

“No, not too much, not at all,” Richie says, rushed. “It’s just, sixteen-year-old Richie is having a moment, in here.” He taps a finger to his head. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Aaand moment’s over, okay.” He hooks one hand around Eddie’s neck and pulls him back in to suck on his tongue, other hand going to the button of his jeans.

Eddie cottons on right away. He shuffles backwards off the bed to awkwardly shimmy out of the jeans and shuck off his hoodie as Richie does the same with his slacks, lifting his hips and twisting. He hurls them somewhere in the corner of the room and turns back.

The breath punches out of him when he lays eyes on Eddie. He’s stripped down to his white t-shirt and red boxer-briefs. He looks amazing, all wiry muscle and lightly haired thighs that Richie would love to suck dark, long-awaited marks into. But his eye is drawn first to his chest. The jagged, shadowy scar tissue is barely detectable beneath the thin material of his shirt. The uncertainty in the draw of Eddie’s mouth tells Richie he kept it on for a reason. 

Unnecessary _,_ Richie thinks. He loves any reminder that Eddie survived, that he’s alive before him.

Lips parted, Richie slides to the edge of the bed, knees spread, feet flat on the floor. He holds out a hand, upright, questioning.

Eddie seems to understand his meaning, because after a moment’s hesitation he steps forward into Richie’s warm hand. Richie’s fingers splay almost across the whole of Eddie’s chest, a sunburst, feeling the bumps, the dips, the bits of shattered bone that were culled and cleared away. He can feel Eddie’s heart pounding beneath his palm, imagines that he can feel the muscle directly, hatching like an egg in his hand. Tears well in his eyes as Eddie’s fingers curl around his wrist, holding his hand there.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Richie whispers, lifting his gaze to Eddie.

A mournful fire burns in Eddie’s dark eyes as he looks back at Richie. Still holding Richie’s hand to his chest, he leans down and kisses him, sweet, strong. A pledge. When he pulls back, he smiles.

“I’m here for you, doofus,” he says.

Richie laughs helplessly, his tears clearing. Eddie’s grip on his wrist loosens as he stands back up, and Richie’s hand slides down his front, feeling his lean stomach, a thumb dipping in his belly button, to the elastic of his boxer briefs, the heat in Richie’s gut reigniting as his gaze follows his fingertips. 

Eddie’s cock is a hard, straining outline in the silvery shadows. A dark wet spot by the broad head visibly spreads as Richie’s palm slips to the side, following the curve of his psoas muscle. Richie’s mouth floods at the sight.

“Fu- _uck,_ ” he groans, reaching for the hard jutting bone of Eddie’s hip to tug him forward. “Forget fucking myself, I’m gonna die if I don’t suck your dick.”

“Sure you will, Rich, _ohh_ —” Eddie’s laugh strangles into a moan as Richie drops to his knees beside the bed and presses his open mouth to Eddie’s cock, over his underwear, where it’s already wet. It’s sticky and salty-slick, and Richie sucks the head into his mouth, laving it through the red cotton. One of Eddie’s hands buries itself in his hair, and when he looks up, Eddie is gazing down at him, incredulous. “What the fuck, Richie, what the _fuck,_ how does that feel so good? It doesn’t fucking make sense...”

Richie’s fingertips ghost over the waistband, questioning. He presses a kiss to the strip of skin, dips his tongue down beneath the elastic so Eddie jerks. “Can I?” he asks, pleading.

Eddie looks at him, swallows, and then nods. “Yeah,” he croaks. “Yeah, _yes,_ please, Rich, I want to feel your mouth on me, I’ve thought about this so many times—”

Heat spiking in his stomach, his palms, his dick, Richie peels the boxer briefs away, down his thighs, and then his vision is full of Eddie’s stiff, dripping cock. As it’s revealed, a spurt of precome beads at the tip and overflows, sliding down the taut line of his dick. Richie dips his head forward and presses the flat of his tongue to the droplet and licks, long and hot, up to the tip.

Eddie throws his head back, his thighs trembling as his breathing stutters. Then Richie takes all of him into his mouth, salt on his lips and tongue, the heavy weight of him against the roof of his mouth, the back of his throat when he takes him to the root.

“Oh, fuck, Richie, _Jesus,_ your _mouth,_ ” Eddie moans, his hand fisting in Richie’s hair as he begins a rhythm, Eddie’s cock sliding between his lips, over his tongue. He presses the heel of his hand to his own throbbing dick, making himself moan around Eddie’s. 

“ _God,_ ” Eddie whines. “It feels so fucking good, Rich. I’m already so worked up, there’s no way I’m gonna last—”

Richie snakes a hand around Eddie’s thigh, feeling the straining tendons. Reaches around to palm his ass, pull him into his mouth even deeper, hollowing his cheeks as he sucks, making Eddie buck into his mouth, fingers tangled in his hair. Fuck, Eddie’s practically fucking his face, he thinks, head spinning with desire. Eddie Kaspbrak is fucking his fucking _face._ He moans around Eddie’s dick, drooling.

“Rich, Richie, oh _god,_ you can’t— I’m gonna— oh, _fuck,_ Richie, fuck, _fuck_ —” Eddie groans and jerks unevenly above him before he spills his come over the back of Richie’s tongue, down his throat, and it tastes bitter and burns like molten silver, but Richie swallows it eagerly, a pit of need deep in his gut.

Reluctantly, he pulls off Eddie’s dick, making Eddie gasp and twitch, oversensitive, before he falls forward over Richie, onto his hands, nuzzling into his neck.

“Holy shit, Richie,” he breathes. “That was… I’ve never... It’s never felt like that before.”

“Eds,” Richie murmurs, running his hands over Eddie’s back, making him shiver with aftershocks. He’s still in his t-shirt, and Richie wonders if he should say something now, tell Eddie he doesn’t care, that he loves him no matter what, loves him _because_. But then his dick twitches rudely against Eddie’s thigh, and Eddie laughs into his throat and pulls off him.

“So now that you’ve sucked my dick,” he says, eyebrow raised, “can I finally watch you jack off?”

Richie laughs and grips his dick through his boxers, smiling when Eddie’s eyes blow even wider at the sight. “Ehh, whutevah you say, boss,” he says, chomping an imaginary cigar like he did when they were kids, making Eddie roll his eyes and laugh.

He wriggles across the bed, his hand groping for the drawer pull on the bedside table. He yanks it open and fumbles inside it until he finds the bottle of lube. He returns to Eddie, who is lying on his side, his boxer-briefs pulled back up over the softening mound of his dick, outlined in dampness from his precome and Richie’s mouth. His eyes are heavy-lidded but alert, his face softly smiling, his hair an absolute mess. He’s the most gorgeous person Richie has ever seen. Richie’s heart aches.

But so does his dick, and he’s been wanting to get off since he thought of Eddie bossing him around in suspenders. He hooks his thumbs under the elastic of his boxers and looks to Eddie. “Well, this is it,” he says. “No going back. Are you sure you’re ready?” 

Eddie snorts. “ _This_ is the point of no return? Not you sucking my whole entire skeleton out through my dick?”

Richie grins. “That’s right. Prepare to have your life changed forever.” He whips his boxers down his legs and all the way off, tossing them somewhere with the rest of their clothing.

Even with the short intermission, Richie’s cock is rock-hard and throbbing, dark and thickly veined as it curves up over his stomach. He’s a little wet, too, though nothing like Eddie. Fuck, just the thought of Eddie’s dripping cock makes him wrap a hand around his own dick and give it a pump, dry but for the slight slickness of his precome. His hips lift off the bed as he does. He’s so hard-up, nearly ready to blow already.

“Jesus, Rich,” Eddie breathes next to him. “This is fucked up.”

Richie looks at him askance. “Excuse me?”

“Our whole lives you’ve been making jokes about how big your dick is,” he says, annoyed, “and the whole time you were telling the truth.”

Richie laughs, still stroking. “It’s not that big,” he says modestly, huskily. “I’ve seen bigger.”

“Well, _I_ haven’t,” Eddie says petulantly. “Suddenly I’m glad we agreed that I should fuck you first.”

“Fuck, Eds.” Richie’s hips jerk at that, his eyes sliding shut as he fucks into his fist. His other hand gropes madly for the lube and pops the top. He reluctantly removes his hand from his dick to slick up the fingers of one hand, the palm of the other. He bends one knee toward his chest and snakes an arm under it, pressing one slick finger to his hole.

Eddie sucks in a breath beside him, the bed squeaking as he shifts to lean closer. “Holy shit, Rich, you’re gonna—” 

He raises an eyebrow, trying to school his face as his fingers circle his rim. “You asked to see me fuck myself,” he says, wryly. “What did you expect?”

Eddie’s eyes are enormous, dark as the sky, white pinpricks of reflected starlight shifting as they rake over Richie like he wants to devour him. “Is this what you were gonna do when you got home tonight?” he asks, low, dangerous.

Richie’s breath hitches as he puts his other hand to his pulsing cock, sliding hot over it, as he dips one finger in, to the first knuckle. He nods with a whine, eyelids fluttering closed.

Then Eddie’s hand is on his chin, turning Richie’s face to look at him. His gaze is scorching. “Tell me,” he orders him. “What were you going to think about? Were you going to think about me?” 

“Mm, fuck, you know I was, Eddie,” he groans, sliding the finger in farther, feeling the slight stretch, combined with the delicious slickness around his cock. “Always think of you. No one else.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Eddie murmurs, palm sliding down over Richie’s chest, ghosting over a nipple, making him shiver. “Because you’re mine, aren’t you, Rich?”

“Hnng, fuck, Eddie,” Richie moans and nearly comes at that, right then, his heart pounding as he thrusts into his slippery fist, tears pricking at the sides of his eyes, unsure if it’s from the sensation or the emotion of Eddie calling him _his._ He sinks his finger all the way in, pulls it out to add another, just as slick. He speeds up the pace of his other hand, slipping over his thick length again and again, wishing for more, wishing for Eddie’s hand pressing him into the mattress, Eddie’s cock fucking into him until he’s quivering and helpless, writhing.

“Are you thinking about me fucking you, Richie?” Eddie growls, reading his mind, and Richie nods frantically, making a strangled sound. “I’m gonna fuck you so good, Rich,” he goes on, hands skating over Richie’s stomach, his sides, his shoulders, his jaw. “Gonna make you feel as amazing as you made me feel. Fuck, you’re so good, you deserve everything, baby,” he gasps, his voice catching on the term of endearment, as though tasting the word for the first time, unfamiliar between his tongue, and then, overflowing after it, he chokes: “God, I love you so much, Richie.” 

With a strangled cry, Richie spills over his fist, coming in white ribbons over his stomach and fingers as his hips thrust desperately upward over and over, all on the echoes of _I love you so much Richie love you so much love you love you love love love_

When his orgasm finally subsides, he realizes that Eddie is stroking his hair, still whispering in his ear, telling him how good he is, how beautiful, how much he wants him, and the words go straight into his chest, warming him from within his ribs, radiating to his fingers and toes. He withdraws his hands from between his thighs with a trembling sigh, and Eddie murmurs a kiss into the line of his jaw, and then the tears come streaming down his cheeks.

They run down the sides of his face, right to Eddie’s lips. He jerks his head up. “Richie, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Did we— Should we not have—?”

Richie shakes his head vehemently. “Holy shit, Eds, no, that’s not it,” he says forcefully. He cracks an eye to see Eddie staring at him, worry etched in his face. He hates how his voice creaks when he sniffs, “You love me?”

The worry doesn’t disappear. “Yeah, Richie,” Eddie says, uneasily, leaning away. “I thought you knew that. With the flight out here, and kissing you, and, you know. Everything.” He licks his lips. “Is that a problem?”

“Fuck no,” Richie laughs wetly, propping himself up on his elbows. “Eddie, I just came harder than I ever have in my life because you said you loved me. How could you possibly think that was a problem?” 

“Well, I dunno!” Eddie exclaims, now going defensive, exasperated, with that barely-there undertone of devastating fondness. Familiar. _Eddie_. “Maybe because you started _crying_ when I said it?”

“Yeah, man, because I fuckin’ love you too,” Richie says, tears still spilling down his face. He’s a fucking mess.

Eddie’s eyebrows lift, bowing upward, incredulous, hopeful. “You do?” he asks.

“Yeah, since we were kids,” Richie says. “I _literally said_ I’ve been in love with you since we were kids.”

“No, you said you were in love with me _when_ we were kids,” Eddie corrects, slicing the flat of his hand through the air for emphasis. “Big fucking difference.”

“You fucking pedant,” Richie grouses affectionately, as Eddie did to him earlier, on the phone. “Of course I’m still in love with you. What else did you think all that stuff about wanting to touch you for thirty years was about?” 

“You can want to touch someone and not be in love with them, Richie!” 

“Oh, I know, Eds. I met your mom.”

“ _Fuck. You._ ”

Richie cracks up, laughing so wetly through the tears that he’s nearly suffocating, making noises like a pig in a trough. He’s pretty sure a snot bubble pops in his left nostril, even. 

Through it all, Eddie stares at him hard. Finally, his eyes crinkle up at the sides, and he shakes his head, laughing. “So you’ve loved me since we were kids?” he asks softly.

“Yep,” Richie says, popping the P with relish.

“And I’ve loved you since we were kids, too.”

Richie’s heart swells. “That’s what I hear,” he says.

“Wow,” says Eddie. “We’re real fucking morons.”

Richie laughs wetly, choking a little. “Yeah, we are,” he says. “But we got here eventually.”

“ _I_ got here eventually,” says Eddie, meaningfully. When Richie quirks his head, he says, “To your birthday, Rich. First time since 1983.”

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t figure it out sooner,” says Richie, teasing. “Because you never came to my birthday.”

“Maybe,” laughs Eddie. “Probably.”

Richie grins. “So you’re saying it’s all your fault.” 

“Don’t push it,” Eddie warns, rolling his eyes. He leans in and presses his mouth to Richie’s, kissing him slow and sweet, making Richie languid with it. “I love you, Richie,” he says, against his mouth. “Happy birthday.”

“I love you, too, Eds,” Richie says, smiling. “But if it’s not on the day, it doesn’t count.”

Eddie snorts and snakes his arm around Richie’s stomach, nuzzling his face into his neck, warm and glad. “Then I guess I’ll just have to stick around for next year,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> hello all! i got some inspiration for a smutty oneshot for richie's birthday and practically ruined myself to write it in time. please leave a comment or a kudo or anything to let me know what you thought! it's the first real smut i've ever posted so i'm super nervous. if people like it i might post an idea i had for a morning after fic. :)
> 
> you can also talk at me on twitter, if you like! [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_)
> 
> [here](https://www.amazon.com/Amscan-Pokemon-Birthday-Party-Balloons/dp/B079DJKVFW) is the pikachu balloon that is mentioned.


End file.
